But 'turtling' or the guard position is very effective if you have been knocked down and dont want your head kicked in. Someone has already pointed out that stomping someones head while they are on the ground is allowed in PRIDE, but it doesnt get done effectively much, simply because you have to kick past the opponents legs, and their entire body, to get at the head.

Your point about technical knockouts I think is on the money. I am shocked at how often fights are ended by a bad cut on a fighters face. Now I don't want people to get hurt, but its a real shame when you see a fight ended this way. But from your perspective, of asking is this realistic from a fighting perspective, then I'd say "Hell yeh". A bad cut that bleeds into the eyes basically blinds you and makes you very vulnerable.

One of the worst things in competitions like PRIDE is simply how often the fights gets started and stopped, and the whole 'green card' BS. It completely changes the dynamics -- makes the whole thing seem a lot more like boxing in that the ref is stopping the flow of the fight all the time.

As for MMA people having 'modes' - well I wouldn't know - I'd say that a good MMAer would break down the barriers between their various training regimes.

BUt I guess at the end of the day the question is - would a good MMAer beat the living **** out of 99.9% of most martial artists out there?... the answer is probably a resounding yes.

BUt I guess at the end of the day the question is - would a good MMAer beat the living **** out of 99.9% of most martial artists out there?... the answer is probably a resounding yes.

I absolutely agree with you on this point. I'm trying very hard to maintain that I'm not here to criticize MMA as a whole, but rather to point out that the sport is a step in the right direction toward the evolution of martial arts, however has stagnated.

the whole does/doesn't work stigma is actually counterproductive - yes, if something works, do it. But when both fighters are limited only to what has worked x,000 number of times before, they feel no need to innovate. I think this way of thinking can cause the art as a whole to miss out on some elements that may work better than they think. While I will be the first person to say that fighting has changed over the past thousand years and that alot of TMA methods are outdated or obsolete, it is better to try and reevaluate them and bring them up to date than to discard them outright.

Capoeira was an extreme example, sure, but I see MMA traveling in a cycle just like everything else. Right now it's such a tight skillset that it's only a matter of time before fighters start to develop new methods that beat the old methods, and the whole thing will start over again. Isn't this exactly what happened to the Gracies?

And yes, Allan Goes working the guard against Sakuraba was very successful in stalling the fight and making it boring, but I would by no means say he dominated. If I were to call that fight, I'd have called in in favor of Sakuraba because he was actually fighting as opposed to stalling on his back. This same strategy, used by Chico at Pride 5 ended in a badly bruised leg and Sakuraba taking the fight. Why did these guys stall in the guard during their fights with Sakuraba? Because he's an innovator, they don't understand his game and they couldn't take him on without resorting to stalling.

On the subject of Sakuraba, if you look back to his fight against Carlos Newton at Pride 3, Newton missed an early opportunity to land some hefty strikes on Sakuraba because he was so focused on setting up a submission that he didn't even bother. He could have won the fight about two minutes in, but because he failed to recognize this opportunity, he got caught with a kneebar later in the fight.

I wouldn't say that passing the guard is useless as someone had said earlier, but rather that alot of fighters who use the guard don't really know how to use it. It depends on the person. A good BJJ player will use the guard to gain position or submit you. But a kickboxer who learned to use the guard out of necessity will use it to stall and can be easily beaten by a standing GnP. I have no qualms about fighters who have good technical defense from the bottom- I take issue with the fact that too many fighters use the guard position to stall fights.

But with the whole lack of technical punching aspect - is the technical punching thrown out the window once you have to worry about takedown attempts? Has MMA showed us that technical punching is an obsolete form? As a major proponent of boxing, I'd have a huge problem accepting that.

As I said before, I misued the term 'turtling' because I hadn't realized that it's still considered guard position if your opponent is standing up.

I hear ya man, I was told that I should try it instead of bashing it, and that might make it better.

I'm still trying to get is shape though.

Totally right however, and the "fans" have been conditioned to only like certain things too. In Honolulu, there are like big, 20 y/o guys that wear UFC clothes, and walk with confidence, but I have never seen them when I go "gym scoping."

Both the standup player and the man on the ground are refusing to play at the range their opponent has chosen. Why is the guy refusing to go to the floor any less stalling than the player refusing to stand up? Watch Werdum vs. Kharitonov.

Perhaps the guy standing isn't allowed to kick the crap out of the guy on the ground.

Real flaw in MMA ....

Poor approach fighting to get to the good grappling. Technically the token stand up of most fighters is really bad. You can site the few exceptions. Lord knows I do. But for the most part, Its slacking. And those few exception really make a huge difference in the game play.